Harvard Business School

Melvin Copeland couldn't assume that his Marketing students in the fall of 1920—the first students ever subjected to the School's homegrown case method—would know what to do with it.   He therefore handed out a "method of analysis" that he wanted the students to use, which included the following points:

• Crystallize the problem.
• Break it up into constituent parts.
• What questions must be decided?
• List factors for and against each question of policy decided.  
• Avoid one-sided analysis and snap judgments.  
• Harmonize decisions on the constituent problems and reach a final conclusion.
• The conclusion is less important than the analysis but a conclusion must be reached.
• Differences of opinion are welcome.
• Distinguish between questions of fact and questions of policy.   It is in the latter that we are interested.  
• A policy once established furnishes a precedent.   It sets up rules which can be carried out by subordinates.   Hence our job is to study policies, for we are approaching the subject from the standpoint of a business executive, and not from that of a clerk.